Australia wants to protect children?

Australia will have a law in 2008 enforced by ACMA to protect minors from content that is deemed incorrect for them. Basically they ported the movie ratings to the online content providers. While I sympathize with their intentions, I think they got their wires crossed somewhere. In no way will this law help to protect the children, it will only worsen the privacy situation for all non-minors. You have to enter your credentials (credit card number and name) for each site you’re going to visit that may hold content that is deemed inappropriate.

How will this end up being implemented?

Probably badly, because the creditcard data will be stored by parties that had no dealings with it previously. That will be a great target for phishers and hackers alike.

It will be very educating for all other countries, because legislators all over the world more or less think alike. Measuring the effectiveness of this law will be quite difficult though, which makes it an immediate success. This won’t be the last we’ve heard on legislation that intends to protect minors from harmful content.

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